State environmental regulators refused Thursday to allow the developer of a proposed liquefied natural gas facility in Robbinston to withdraw its application in order to submit additional information.

Downeast LNG had sent a letter to the Maine Board of Environmental Protection last week stating that the company’s application was missing information from the Maine Department of Marine Resources on the project.

The company also wanted to submit additional information on lobster surveys in Mill Cove, where the LNG facility would be built, as well as possible alternative routes for a pipeline in order to avoid Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge.

But on Thursday the BEP voted 5-3 against allowing Downeast LNG to withdraw the application in part because of concerns about drawing out the already lengthy regulatory review. The BEP held a week of public hearings and work sessions on the proposal earlier this summer.

Earlier this month, a BEP board member and Assistant Attorney General Peggy Bensinger questioned whether it would be appropriate for the board to act on Downeast LNG’s applications without complete comments from the Department of Marine Resources.

It was unclear Thursday evening how the board’s vote would affect the review.

In a statement released after the vote, Downeast LNG President Dean Girdis said he was disappointed that the board would not allow the company to withdraw in order to address issues raised during the public hearings.

“While we would have welcomed the opportunity to provide additional information, we believe that our applications are thorough and complete, and that the numerous studies that we submitted are more than sufficient to address all issues that were raised at the public hearings,” Girdis said.

“We are confident that the BEP will objectively review and weigh all of the evidence that was presented, and that its members will approve our applications.”

Project opponents saw the board’s vote differently, however.

Robert Godfrey with the Save Passamaquoddy Bay 3-Nation Alliance said allowing Downeast LNG to withdraw at this time would have reduced the public hearings to a “dry run” while “creating unreasonable expense and burden to the state, intervenors, and the public.”

“Even though [Downeast LNG] knew the exact issues and requirements they needed to address long before they filed their permit application, they chose not to answer a number of critical concerns during the application and hearing process,” Godfrey said in a statement.

Not so, responded another Downeast LNG official.

Rob Wyatt, vice president with the company, said the company had timed its application to the BEP to coincide with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s review of the application. The company wanted to make sure state regulators had enough time to review the application and provide input to federal regulators.

But because of the intertwined state and federal reviews, it placed everyone under a time crunch, Wyatt said. The company simply wanted to supply additional information that they believe would help the board in its considerations, he said.

Downeast LNG hopes to build a 320,000-cubic-meter LNG import terminal, storage tanks, a regasification plant and a pier on an 80-acre site at Mill Cove in Robbinston.

A second company, Quoddy Bay LNG, has submitted plans with regulators to build an even larger LNG facility on Passamaquoddy Bay tribal land in Pleasant Point. Both projects have encountered opposition from some local residents and the Canadian government, which has threatened to block the massive tankers from passing through Canadian waters en route to the Maine facilities.